Tadao Ando, born in 1941 is one of the most renowned contemporary Japanese architects. Characteristics of his work include large expanses of unadorned architectural concrete walls combined with wooden or stone floors and large windows. Active natural elements, like sun, rain, and wind are a distinctive inclusion to his style. He has designed many notable buildings, including Row House in Sumiyoshi, Osaka, 1976, which gave him the Annual Prize of Architectural Institute of Japan in 1979, Church of the Light, Osaka, 1989, Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, St. Louis, 2001, Armani Teatro, Milan, 2001, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 2002 and 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT in Tokyo, 2007. Among many awards he has received are; Gold Medal of Architecture, Academie d'Architecture (French Academy of Architecture) in 1989, The Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1995, Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects in 2002, and Gold Medal of Union Internationale des Architectes in 2005. Ando is an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the Royal Academy of Arts in London. He was also a visiting professor at Yale, Columbia, UC Barkley, and Harvard Universities.
